Ninth Annual Meeting. 7, 



nobleness of race and high destiny, to place the Greek people where it could achieve 

 prodigies of brain-product. How nobly it did this is shown by advanced civilization, 

 arts, laws; its unrivaled architecture and statuary; its grand literature of poems, history 

 and philosophy. But an imaginative, sensual element enters into every Greek produc- 

 tion. 



In Italy the climate is even nearer perfection. " Varro preferred the climate of Italy 

 to that of Greece, as producing in perfection everything good for the use of man." If it 

 lacks the grand, rugged mountain scenery of Switzerland, it has enough mountains to 

 give great variety, with wildly romantic valleys between them. On all sides the sea 

 reflects the sun's bright rays; now sea breezes, now mountain zephyrs dally with the 

 luxuriant foliage of the oak, chestnut, mulberry iind. vine. Here brain -products were 

 on a vaster scale, with more patience in working them out, broader culture, especially in 

 law and general knowledge. But when in the Roman Senate there was no longer the 

 cry of Cato that Carthage must be destroyed, when wealth and luxury and possibility of 

 ease did their deadly work ori the Koman character, the climate, too warm and humid 

 to drive or invite to hard mental labor, allowed the scepter to depart from Italy, and now 

 it is upheld by a sturdier race in a colder climate. 



France may next claim attention. Here the climate is a little colder than in Italy, 

 ranging from 60° in the south to 50° in the north. Zones of olive, maize, vine, small 

 grains, succeed each other. The climate is modified by proximity to the sea and to moun- 

 tain ranges. From the various climatic influences, genial and sunny, there could be 

 expected a literature sparkling and vivacious, and such the French have produced. In 

 other things beside literature, similar results have arisen from brain-power. The names 

 ■of Eousseau, Voltaire, Racine, Moliere, De Stael, Lamartine, suggest graceful, racy, but 

 not profound productions. Doubtless France has passed the zenith of her glory in brain- 

 products. 



To find the peoples who are most prolific in brain-work, it is necessary to go to colder 

 and more northern climates. Justly, Great Britain and Germany can lay claim to pre- 

 eminence. England, near the center of the temperate zone, is, by its insular position, 

 never subjected to extreme climatic changes, and grows food eminently fitted to produce 

 a robust physique — not food so much to pamper the appetite as to satisfy the demands of 

 a rigorous cliuiate. The names of such men as Spenser, Milton, Shakspeare and Gibbon 

 will ever be abundant proof of England's intellectual grandeur. In one corner of Great 

 Britain lies plucky little Scotland, "where to a late period a scanty population rescued 

 itself from want or barbarism by determined and intelligent industry." Scotland has 

 given to the world James Watts, Burns, Hume, Scott, Macaulay, Livingstone and Car- 

 lyle. It is generally recognized, even by Englishmen, that she produces a superior race 

 of men; and to what is this fact due more than to her cold bracing mountain air and 

 severe climate? 



In Germany, now the acknowledged store-house of ideas, producing more and better 

 brain results, possibly, than all the rest of the world, the climate is cold and exacting. 

 The temperature is eight or ten degrees lower than in France, and equal to that of Scot- 

 land. The Vosges and Hartz mountains, witli their spurs, make Germany a country of 

 mountain air. The climate is more continental than in Great Britain, which is possibly 

 an advantage to brain-workers. Here Luther, Richter, Gotlie, and Schiller lived and 

 wrote; and their peers are toiling on to-day, finding the cool, bracing climate a most 

 vigorous energizer to hard work. The productions are not so spontaneous as to beget 

 indolence, and reaction of the human system against the cold sets the powers of the mind 

 into vigorous action. Not alone to her climate does Germany owe her wonderful brain- 

 products, unrivaled in time, but largely to it. These northern nations, France, (jreat Brit- 

 ain, and Germany, present mental results that are less fanciful than those of the ancients. 

 Facts are reached by the inductive method; a purer philosophy and nobler religion are 



